Employee well-being has rightfully grown into a hot topic because of its positive impact on people and businesses. Since 2020, stress among the global workforce is high, which undermines the importance of creating a company culture based on a healthy and positive foundation. Not only does this lead to increased productivity and job satisfaction, it can also reduce turnover and absenteeism.

In this article, we will explore the importance of employee well-being, the impact it has on mental health and job satisfaction, and why it’s important for your business's success in 2023 and the years beyond.

Link #1 - Happy employees make happy customers

Whether you are dealing with an employee from a large multinational corporation, or with a service worker from a little family-owned business, as soon as you notice that the staff are happy and in a good mood the interaction usually starts off in a pleasant spirit. This, in turn, puts you as a client in a good mood and sets a great tone for starting a business transaction. This little example shows how customer happiness can be accomplished by focusing on employee happiness first because a happy workforce translates into more satisfied customers. There is even research to support this hypothesis, showing the strong connection between employee well-being and a striving business.

Link #2 - Engaged employees tend to stay with their company

Let’s take this example one step further and think about a happy employee working in an organization they like. If somebody is happy with their organization, why should they leave? Employees who are happy and engaged in their work feel confident enough in themselves and the organization that they are not tempted to look for another job elsewhere. This means that a company can keep its best employees and avoid having to go through the time, effort, and money involved in finding and training new employees.

This is especially important for small businesses, which tend to have a smaller pool of employees from which to draw. It can even be argued that the longer it takes to replace an employee, the more likely it is that you will lose customers and revenue while your business is down one person.

Link #3 - Employee well-being can attract top talent

A company's well-being program is not just about offering employees exercise classes, yoga sessions, and healthy snacks. It's also about building a culture that attracts top talent that contributes to the business's success.

Well-thought-through well-being programs will help you recruit and retain the kind of people who are passionate about what they do, which enables them to create innovative solutions for customers and clients. By building a culture around well-being, you can attract top talent regardless of their age, gender, or other factors. This can also help you with diversifying your potential talent pool.

Link #4 - Employee well-being can increase productivity

According to research done by Gallup, employees that are happy, healthy, and thriving, have improved performance, meaning they take fewer sick days and deliver higher levels of productivity. They also have lower rates of burnout and turnover. As employee productivity is an important factor for any business focusing on success, this link is vital for growth.

Use the link between Employee Well-Being and Business Success to your advantage

As you’ve seen, there are various reasons that make use of the power of employee well-being to strengthen business success. The key is to make sure that you keep it bespoke to your people and the requirements of your organization and don't use blank policies or programs that you find online. There are no quick fixes when it comes to ensuring employee well-being, rather, it's an ongoing process that requires constant monitoring and tweaking as best suits your organization's needs. 

If you want to step up your team culture with just a few clicks, check out our Doozy - Matchmaking to schedule introductions for new and existing teammates directly in Slack!

Which well-being initiative do you like the best? Share it with us on LinkedIn over at Doozyhq!

Gallup - State of the Global Workplace: 2022 Report

Gallup - Employee Wellbeing Is Key for Workplace Productivity

Forbes - How Happy Employees Make Happy Customers

Harvard Business Review - The Key to Happy Customers? Happy Employees

4 Surprising Links between Employee Well-Being and Business Success

The impact of the global health crisis continues to reshape society and the world of work. Business leaders will be faced with new challenges and opportunities in the upcoming year, which is why we want to help you navigate these unpredictable times by learning about some of the major developments that you will be seeing in 2023. 

We have gathered trend highlights from across the web so you’re aware of 50 workplace trends to keep an eye on in 2023. 

By being aware of these trends you will get a better understanding of why certain work-related topics are becoming more important than others, allowing you to cultivate an informed opinion on how you want your business to react.

“Quiet hiring” offers new ways to snag in-demand talent

Hybrid flexibility reaches the front lines

Squeezed by competing leader and employee expectations, managers need support

Pursuit of nontraditional candidates expands talent pipelines

Healing pandemic trauma opens a path to sustainable performance

Organizations push DEI forward amid growing pushback

Getting personal with employee support creates new data risks

Algorithmic bias concerns lead to more transparency in recruiting tech

Gen Z skills gaps reveal workforce-wide erosion of social skills

Focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) - it will be important for companies to ensure that the use of technology is ethical and transparent and that it supports rather than undermines DEI efforts

Focus on employee training and development - companies continue to invest in their employees’ skills and knowledge

A rise of AI - HR professionals should be proactive in staying up-to-date on the latest AI trends and developments in order to best leverage this technology for the benefit of their companies and employees

Focus on remote work will continue -  it is important for companies to carefully consider the logistics of implementing remote work and to ensure that it is done in a way that is fair and effective for all employees

Focus on Employee Wellness - By investing in the well-being of their employees, companies can improve productivity, reduce healthcare costs, and create a more positive and supportive work environment

Focus on Employee Experience -  The benefits of this trend include higher retention rates, lower recruitment costs, satisfied and engaged employees, and improved customer satisfaction and business performance

Reskilling & Upskilling - In addition to traditional methods of training and development, companies are also using more innovative approaches, such as gamification and virtual reality, to engage and motivate employees

Recruitment in 2023 - In addition to traditional methods of training and development, companies are also using more innovative approaches, such as gamification and virtual reality, to engage and motivate employees

🧨 4-day work week goes mainstream-ish. 

🤖 AI will help us build routines and outsource tedious tasks. 

📝 Asynchronous work becomes a standard.  

🏡 Co-living spaces will boom all over the world.

🌈 Company culture will be finally based on trust & transparency.

🤝 Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) become an alternative to forming a company or an NGO. 

🏄‍♀️ Employees continue to push for a better work-life blend.

📝 Head of Remote is finally becoming a hot job title.

🌎 Hiring from anywhere boosts diversity & inclusion.

👩‍🏫 Each Team has its own Operating System

🖥️ Pay-per-use coworking becomes a usual thing. 

💰 Pay transparency experiment continues. 

💼 Productizing work helps companies focus on the outcome.

👩‍💼 Rapid employee up-skilling is needed, NOW. 

🏋️ Remote-first training for people leaders. 

📖 Standard Operating Procedures will help make work, work.

🏖️ Workation-as-a-service will be the new remote product category.

🔎 Workplace analytics will help analyze remote/hybrid strategies. 

📸 VR makes baby steps toward mass adoption.

Trend Scout: Thomas Derum / Jessica White

Employee well-being and work-life balance will be top priorities for companies.

A bigger investment in upskilling and retention initiatives.

Freelancing platforms will continue to gain steam.

A rise in employee surveillance to track productivity.

An emphasis on culture and collaboration.

Embracing flexible hours and four-day work weeks.

Salary transparency will continue to gain popularity.

Focus on Employees, AI, and the continuation of Remote Work

In this overview, you have seen some of the main workplace trends that are likely to shape the future of work in 2023. Some of the key trends include: remote work continuing to have momentum, the rise of the gig economy, a focus on employee well-being, the use of AI and automation, the growing importance of digital skills, and greater investment in employee experience and sustainability. 

You will have to understand or maybe even have to adapt to these trends to stay competitive and meet the changing needs of employees, the market, and society. 

You can shortcut your way into the field of automating your employee happiness and creating a culture of connected teams by trying out Doozy For Slack today! 

Which trend do you think is the most important for 2023? Head over to LinkedIn and let us know at Doozyhq!

Let’s kick off this article by clarifying two of the most popular “Digital Nomad myths”: 

Working from a hammock at the beach is not as fun as it sounds (…nobody likes sand in their keyboard). 


Meeting hundreds of new people a month can actually make you feel more lonely and less connected. 

But why is the second point true? Because – Harvard’s 75-year long study on happiness has got it -– it’s not the quantity of connections we have in our lives that matter, it is about the quality. In order to live a truly happy and fulfilling life, the only factor we really need is meaningful relationships in our lives. 

Yet, we know that building long-term relationships as a freedom-chasing Digital Nomad almost comes as the trade-off with the job description itself. Being constantly on the move just doesn’t allow much time to dig deeper. 

After a few years on the road (and plane) as a Digital Nomad myself, I came to a point when I realised I really love meeting people but having the same repetitive small talk conversations countless times a week is: Shallow. Tiring. And unfulfilling. I’d rather have one hundred deep conversations with one person than one shallow conversation with one hundred people. 

The question that remains is: How do you connect? I mean really connect, when the places & faces around you are constantly changing and the only constant you have is (hopefully) your wifi connection?

So I thought to myself “I’m surrounded by so many exciting people with interesting stories living inside of them, how the heck do I crack the surface level?” I could either go on and A) Put a sticker on my forehead that says “Hi, I’m Nini, 28 from Germany and am travelling for xy months.” or B) Find a way to skip the small talk and just get down to the juicy part. No surprise – as the writer of this article, I chose B. 

That’s when the idea for my icebreaker game “eyeConnect - stronger than wifi” was born. 

A conversation-sparking card game with 180 questions in six colourful connection levels – the higher the wifi bar, the deeper the level of the question and thus, the stronger is the connection. 

I don’t mean to toot my own horn here, but creating this game was a GAME CHANGER. In the most literal meaning of the word. Skipping the small talk and simply asking better questions is so simple, yet so profound. It’s the blend of feeling seen, heard and understanding other people’s perspectives as much as learning to get to know yourself (you might be surprised what answers are coming out of your own mouth!). There’s just something magical about “clicking” with someone you might just have met and then getting so lost in the conversation that you forget about time and space. Just because of ONE question. 

Building meaningful connections is not rocket science. It is simply about asking better questions, being open to share and genuinely caring about the answers. THAT’s the glue that bonds. 

Online, as the founder of the remote team building platform The Work Happiness Project & 

Offline as the creator of the Digital Detox icebreaker game eyeConnect - stronger than wifi

Harvard’s Study of Adult Development (75-year study)

How to connect more strongly than wifi – when wifi is your only constant

During my career, I’ve often worked at rapid-growth companies, where teams increase in size quickly. I’ve been offered roles in companies where the engineering population has doubled from 90 to 180 in less than 9 months, and I’ve dealt with challenges in leading teams and creating coherence and alignment when working with people who may have great qualifications but are unfamiliar with the way things work in that specific company.. 

In this blog post, I’m going to cover some thoughts on how you can best help new joiners become an effective part of the team as quickly and as painlessly as possible. We’ll talk about some things you can do if you really are doubling in size quickly, as well as if you’re hiring at a more modest pace. I’m mainly going to focus on desk workers, but some of this can be applied more generally.

If a new joiner is not supported as they learn the ropes, you have a recipe for an unhappy new employee, unhappy teammates, and a manager who’s not viewed in a very good light. I generally have found success in getting hiring managers to write an onboarding plan, that covers four main things:

What the new joiner should be seeking to accomplish during the first day, first week, first month, and first 90 days. This should cover not only training, but also their contribution.

How the team is structured and who they should prioritize meeting within the team to get up to speed. Ideally, some of the meetings will have been set up in advance of their first day.

Outside of their immediate team, the key people across the company that it will be important for them to know to get their work done.

What standard meetings and events are happening that they will be expected to be part of.

If you have a manager who doesn’t know what the new hire should be working on, what they need to deliver to be successful, or who they will be working with, then you have someone who shouldn’t be that new hire’s manager!

Doozy is a great tool to help with points 2 and 3, and I’ve found using both Doozy matchmaking (usually within a team) and Coffee Roulette (within larger teams and across teams) really nice lightweight ways to get introductions covered in an effective way. For standard large team events, such as all-hands, or weekly/monthly meetings, ice breakers and virtual team events are fantastic.

If your team is going to grow rapidly, then there’s two problems you need to solve. 

Optimize for onboarding. This means striving to make things easier for new employees first and foremost. A great start is ensuring documentation is always up to date and correct. I try to create a culture of ‘leave it better than you found it’ and make new joiners responsible for editing wikis or other onboarding documents to improve them for the next person. Existing employees may see this as a tax – that documentation wasn’t in such good shape for them! – so it’s important to call out and reward this kind of internal work. Just as it’s better to delete lines of code and simplify rather than just add complexity, you have to create a culture where helping others be better is visibly rewarded.

Define and develop team culture. Teams are different when they’re 2 people, 7 people, 25 people, 75 people and 150 people. Working to define team culture in actionable ways is really important – and getting the team involved in this is crucial. I’ve worked at companies that had leadership principles like Teamwork and Collaboration, which are … obvious but not actionable. I’ve also worked at companies that work hard to operationalize their culture – through leadership principles that are lived and used every day. Creating this culture is more than just writing things down. It’s about participation and leading by example. 

Doozy quizzes, trivia and games are a great way to have team members visibly see each other and collaborate (or compete!) on something that’s not work related, but in which the values that are important to you can still come through. From celebrating birthdays and holidays, to a regular quiz night with icebreakers sprinkled in, teammates don’t just stay one-dimensional (‘Jane in accounts receivable’) but instead lead you to discover Jane’s commitment and drive in training for a triathlon, helping you understand why she’s such a good fit for the team, and someone you can trust to follow through, even if the going gets tough.

A final note on the new joiner experience. I always say that any system without a feedback loop is open to chaos. We’ve all experienced an issue with a product that eventually gets fixed for us, but we’re left feeling like the issue is just going to happen again because no-one is taking feedback and making the right changes. So as part of your new hire onboarding, make sure you take feedback or give them a survey, to help understand how things might be better. Even if you can’t fix anything, just asking for feedback is a great message to send to the new hire. 

If you want to experience how you can connect new joiners to your team, head over to Doozy, it's free!🎉

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